“I told him I was quite prepared to go; but really I didn’t care much one way or the other. He then asked if a ‘change of life,’ as he called it, didn’t appeal to me, and I answered that one never changed his way of life; one life was as good as another, and my present one suited me quite well.”
“Maybe happiness didn’t have to be about the big, sweeping circumstances, about having everything in your life in place. Maybe it was about stringing together a bunch of small pleasures.”
“Nobody’s life is filled with perfect little moments. And if it were, they wouldn’t be perfect little moments. They would just be normal. How would you ever know happiness if you never experienced downs?”
“You’ll be sick or feeling troubled or deeply in love or quietly uncertain or even content for the first time in your life. It won’t matter. Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you’ll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all.”
“We should put life in our faith. We should give ourselves utterly to God in pure abandonment, in temporal and spiritual matters alike, and find contentment in the doing of His will, whether he takes us through sufferings or consolations.”
Cohn: “I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it.”
Jake: “Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.”
“The most amazing fact about Jesus, unlike almost any other religious founder, is that he found God in disorder and imperfection—and told us that we must do the same or we would never be content on this earth. ”
“She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself. With him, she was at ease; her skin felt as though it was her right size.”
“And once again it seemed to the Ordinary Princess as though the sky had fallen into the Forest of Faraway, as she lay on her back in a sea of bluebells and watched a pair of orioles building their nest in the branches over her head.”
“I’ve excluded happiness as one of those possibilities we seek for ourselves. Oh, I still want it, but that’s beside the point. Contentment - they say it’s the ultimate, but I can’t even wish for that. I don’t even want the desire to be content. I can only hope for silence.”
“He thought: Oh, I have fed on honey-dew. On wine and whiskey and champagne and the tender white meat of women and fine clothes and the respect of strong men and the fear of weak and the turn of a card and good horses and the crisp of greenbacks and the cool of mornings and all the elbow room that God or man could ask for.”
“He felt very content. Just as he was dropping off to sleep his eyes snapped open. He had thought he heard a little noise... but no. All was quiet. His eyes closed again. In the morning there was no doubt about it. The noise actually woke him.”
“Together we would walk along the cliff looking at the sea, and though the white men’s ship did not return that spring, it was a happy time. The air smelled of flowers and birds sang everywhere.”
“When they could eat no more, they pawed shallow wells with their hooves for drinking water. Then they rolled in the wiry grass, letting out great whinnies of happiness. They seemed unable to believe that the island was all their own. Not a human anywhere. Only grass. And sea. And the wind.”
“When he went to bed that night, he was very happy. I have a place to live, he thought. And I’ve already got two friends. No, three. Dolly and Mr. Penn and Zaza.”
“There are hundreds of worries and even sorrows that may come along, but- I think what I really mean is that Rose won’t be wanting things to happen. She will want things to stay just as they are. She will never have the fun of hoping something wonderful and exciting may be just round the corner.”